


After the Flash

by aurilly



Category: Lost
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-08-03
Updated: 2009-08-03
Packaged: 2017-10-03 00:39:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aurilly/pseuds/aurilly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sayid finds himself in a strange situation after the bomb goes off.</p>
            </blockquote>





	After the Flash

Sayid struggled to listen to the gunshots and screams emanating from the construction site, but his hearing was going fast, just like everything else. He had never thought it would end like this---alone next to a VW van on the island in 1977 and completely cut off from the action and fighting. Sayid had always been in the thick of things, especially here.

Something terrible was going on, but he didn't know what. Metal was clanking and banging in a way that he'd never heard before. The screams increased, and then he knew no more.

When he came to again, he was still sitting in the same place he had been in before passing out, but the van was gone.

Mysterious.

He'd spent the previous hour or so trying to breathe very shallowly, so he continued for awhile until he realized that there was no need. Looking down at his abdomen, he saw the copious amounts of blood that had been leaking out of him, but when he actually probed the wound with his fingers, he found that it had, for the most part, closed up.

More mysterious.

It seemed that he was mostly fine, somehow, so he tried to stand up. The deathly silence surrounding him scared him even more than the unexplained changes in his surroundings and physical state. Before passing out, everything had been hectic and deafening. Surely, if they had survived, the others would have come back for him. However, the lack of the van was worrying. Jack, Kate, Sawyer and the rest of them were capable of a lot, but he couldn't imagine a scenario in which all of them would decide to drive away and leave him there. Especially Hurley. Hurley would never leave him like that, no matter what.

Unless they'd thought he was dead.

He walked in the direction in which Jack and everyone else had gone. He expected to stagger and struggle, but to Sayid's surprise, walking came easily enough. He felt fine. What didn't come easily was finding the construction site. He knew it couldn't be far, and yet there was no sign of it. There was a clearing, but nothing. The silence was eerie.

Behind him, Sayid heard a rustle in the bushes. He was unarmed, which hitherto had never been a good idea on this island. However, there was nothing to do, because the person was already approaching him. It was someone small and slight, hardly a menace.

"Claire?" Sayid gasped.

"Hi Sayid," she replied with a sweet calm. She smiled at him blandly, as though she was not at all surprised to see him.

Sayid hadn't thought about Claire in years. He felt a pang of guilt at the thought, but it was true. He hadn't been there when she'd disappeared; he hadn't even ever had a chance to question anyone about it before their escape and the island's disappearance. They'd never interacted much while on the island, and after they left… they only way he could keep up the lie of Aaron being Kate's child was to believe it was true, which was relatively easy given Claire's absence.

Therefore, he couldn't tell if there was anything strange or different about her. At any rate, he was too busy wondering if there was anything strange about _himself_.

"Where did you come from?" he asked, trying to make sense of her unexpected appearance.

"I've always been here," she answered matter-of-factly, as though that was enough of an explanation. Then, stretching out her hand, she beckoned, "Come with me."

Sayid took her hand and followed her through the clearing. He tried asking her what had happened to her, what she'd been doing for the past three years, if she had seen the others drive away, what had happened to the construction site… To each of his questions, her only response had been an enigmatic "It's complicated." After awhile, Sayid gave up. Approaching a vine-covered area, she knelt down. "Can you help me with this?"

He knelt down, too, although he didn't know what she wanted him to do. He stared as she cleared the brush away with her hands, revealing what looked like an old stone manhole, covered in the same marking that had been in the underground place where the bomb had been kept. There was a large round handle on it, and using more strength than he would have thought he had, he helped her pull it up to reveal a long tunnel, much like a deep well.

Almost as soon as they'd raised it, Sayid heard a voice calling. "Is somebody here? Hello? Help me, please!"

"Who is down there?" Sayid asked Claire. So far, she'd had what seemed like an ethereal understanding of everything, so she might know what was going on here.

"It's Juliet. Hey, Juliet! Listen to me carefully," Claire called down into the darkness.

Juliet. Sayid had only caught a glimpse of her just before everyone went to detonate the bomb. How had she ended up down there?

"I can't climb! I'm… I have a lot of internal injuries." Yes, it was Juliet's clear tones, surprisingly calm even in this dire circumstance.

"Is there a way for us to go down and get her?" Sayid asked Claire, but she ignored him.

"You're fine!" she yelled. "Trust me. Crawl to the right. Keep crawling until you get to the end of the tunnel. We'll let you out."

"Who are you?" was the faraway reply.

"It's Claire and Sayid!" Sayid finally entered the conversation.

"Sayid?!" He'd never thought that Juliet would ever sound glad to hear his voice, but here she was.

"Yes, it's me," he called.

"You're right! I think I can move!"

It was unbelievable. Sayid looked across the chasm at Claire, who was gazing serenely back at him. There was something eerie about her. There was something eerie about himself. Now he felt certain of it.

"Where will she come out?" he asked.

"I'll show you. There's another door like this that I need you to help me open."

They started walking again, this time down a steep hill all the way into the valley.

"Claire, please tell me what is going on. What has happened?" Sayid pleaded after walking in silence for a few minutes.

Claire took his hand. "Juliet set off the bomb. You must have been asleep and that's why you didn't notice."

"Notice what?"

"The shift. She cancelled out what's down that hole, just for a minute. Everything else moved on, but you and Juliet didn't."

Sayid had no idea what she was talking about. "Moved on?"

"Time, place, life, death. You two must have been just on the edge when it happened, mostly dead but not quite. So you didn't flash on with everyone else. Now you're stuck in this in-between time. That's why you're fine. You never really got hurt."

It was a lot to process. A lot of nonsense. "What about you?" he asked.

She shrugged. "I'm something else. I don't know what, but I'm going to find out."

They reached a spot, and just as Claire had known where the first door was, she suddenly cleared some brush and showed him another one. Together, they pulled it open to reveal a dusty but still radiant Juliet---radiant in the same off-putting way that Claire was. Sayid wondered what he himself looked like, if he looked as unreal as they did.

Juliet threw herself into Sayid's arms, and then into Claire's. Her questions tumbled out fast and furious. "Where is everyone else? What happened? How did you find me? Claire, where did you come from? Where am I?"

"There's no one else around. I have no idea what happened. But according to Claire, it seems like the question is more 'when' are you? When are we?"

"Has there been another flash?" Juliet's hand flew to her nose for some reason that Sayid could not understand.

"We are no time," Claire replied dreamily.

Juliet shot Sayid a nervous glance. He grimaced to share her discomfort at Claire's new attitude.

"Now that we're together, I'm supposed to take you to the man who can answer your questions," she continued in a sing-song.

"Who is that?" asked Juliet.

"Jacob."

Juliet in took a sharp breath. "Do you know this Jacob?" he asked excitedly.

Juliet shook her head. "No, but I've heard of him. He's the man behind the curtain, the one that the leaders always answered to. The lord of the island. Claire, is he like Richard?" she asked feverishly.

"No, he made Richard. Come," she beckoned again, and Sayid and Juliet followed, the two of them now holding hands to face whatever was going on together.


End file.
